She bakes her own cookies for retail sale, so it only makes sense that Elizabeth Hata Watanabe would introduce her own Haute Confectionery Boutique line of cookie butter.
Some Christmas gift baskets she is preparing for corporate clients include the addictive, peanut butter-like spread made with ground-up cookies as a base.
(Cookie butter has become a popular omiyage item for Hawaii travelers to bring home from mainland stores such as Trader Joe’s, though certain brands are available locally.)
Having high-flying friends also has served Watanabe well.
A while back, she created some handmade and baked treats for friend Angela Laprete, and instead of the five things they had discussed, "of course I made 20," she laughed, listing shortbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, handmade marshmallows and other treats.
Laprete, an associate producer on "Hawaii Five-0," took the goodies with her on an inaugural Hawaiian Airlines flight to an international destination and shared them with Hawaiian President and CEO Mark Dunkerley.
In June the airline began offering some of Watanabe’s cookies as part of its Pau Hana food-for-purchase service.
"They’re so amazing with promoting local products," she said of the airline.
"I started on 20 domestic flights. Now I’m on international flights."
Her sweet treats also are available at Hilo Hattie, the Gift Gallery at Castle Medical Center, at Honolulu Gourmet Foods on the lobby level of the Pacific Beach Hotel and soon, as previously mentioned in this space, at Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen locations in Hawaii.
In addition to a still-developing list of retail locations, Watanabe offers the aforementioned gift baskets and corporate gifts, and will cater large events.
Taking small orders — say, one cake for a birthday party — doesn’t make business sense, as she has to pay for commercial kitchen space and time, "but the massive, large orders, this is what I prefer," she said.
Castle Medical Center is a wholesale client, in that some Haute Confectionery Boutique products are available in the gift shop, but "they also use me for the goodie bags for their employees," she said.
Castle ordered 190 hapa brownies (shortbread base topped by a brownie topped by "handcrafted macadamia nut brittle"), 200 campfire cookies (macadamia nut and chocolate chip cookies stuffed with marshmallows, milk chocolate and graham crackers) and other treats.
Island-inspired flavors are her bread-and-butter, including Mochi Crunchies, cookies that incorporate kaki mochi, or arare, and chewy coconut shortbread cookies, as well as guava-, lilikoi-, mango- or lychee-flavored cheesecakes, to name a few.
She also, however, bakes "wine cakes," marketed as Petit Vin, individual cakes in vanilla moscato or chocolate merlot formulations.
And she prepares desserts with seasonal flavors, such as recent offerings in pumpkin spice, and cupcakes with a light white frosting topped by a little candy cane, or miniature versions topped by candy cane chunks.
Previously the owner of a nightclub, bartending academy and restaurant, Watanabe turned her focus to being a stay-at-home mother following the birth of her second child.
With the older two of three having entered school, she turned to baking as a hobby "to keep me from chasing the mailman down the street," she laughed.
"I started baking for everyone and had so much stuff all over," until friends encouraged her to turn the hobby into a business.
It didn’t take much persuading.
"Everything is always like, an opportunity or an idea, so this just turned out to be so much more than a little hobby," said she who could be likened to a force of nature.
She rents space in a commercial kitchen in Kalihi, but increased demand and the expansion of the business into shipping to the mainland, among other things, has Watanabe negotiating for larger commercial kitchen space in Mililani.
Haute Confectionery Boutique operations shut down on Sundays, but Watanabe welcomes orders via her website and says processing of orders can take three to five business days.
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On the Net:
» hauteconfectioneryboutique.com
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“Buy Local” runs on Aloha Fridays. Reach Erika Engle at 529-4303, erika@staradvertiser.com or on Twitter as @erikaengle.
